[1] Denny excelled in her academic pursuits in high school and received multiple scholarships, was recognized for her leadership at the state level, and graduated as class Salutatorian.
[3] In 2007, Denny published a first author paper in the Journal of Neurochemistry highlighting a model system for assessing retinal pathobiology and therapies for ganglioside storage diseases.
[7] Denny first explored hippocampal neurogenesis and published a first author paper in 2010 showing that inhibiting neurogenesis increases novel object exploration and impairs one trial contextual fear-learning in mice suggesting an important role for adult born neurons in cognitive function.
[1] After receiving an NIH DP5 Early Independence Award,[10] Denny started her own lab at Columbia University in 2013 and began her position as an assistant professor of Clinical Neurobiology in Psychiatry.
[2] Denny also holds the title of Research Scientist V in the Division of Systems Neuroscience at the New York State Psychiatric Institute.
[12] These findings suggested the possibility of social neural circuits within the infralimbic prefrontal cortex as a therapeutic target for ameliorating anxiety or other disorders of learned fear associations.
[17] In a Nature paper in 2018, Denny found 8 metabolites that were changed in the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus after ketamine administration.
[17] Denny then looked at another prophylactic in comparison to ketamine, prucalopride - a 5-HT4Rgonist, and found that both have the ability to decrease stress-induced depressive-like behaviors and both alter AMPAR mediated synaptic transmission in the CA3 of the hippocampus.